Here is Andy’s stunning reason for why the Press has not followed him down the dark pit of insanity: It’s because the media is all about maximizing ratings by not causing offense.

Hello, Andy? It’s reality calling. It misses you.

The Media has maximized their ratings simply by dropping the P-Word at every turn, including any story that would probably be considered offensive to Palin or her family.

The cable news rivals (and the print media) all agree on one thing: Palin brings viewers (or readers). Whether you love her, hate her, are annoyed by her, or are curious about her, an awful lot of people want to hear the latest Palin story.

She is the most talked about marginal political player at the national level since…..well, who? She is an irresistible Boogy Man to the liberals, and an attractive departure from the political old guard for the Conservatives. Call her a guilty pleasure for all those who enjoy watching liberals froth at the mouth regarding her, yet would never consider voting for her as a Presidential candidate.

Let’s be serious. Most polls have her consistently lagging well behind several other Republican options. Most Conservative politicians pointedly talk all around her viability as a Presidential candidate. Her folksy, but repetitive, dialogue and inch-deep generalizations about current events and policy leaves most potential voters suspcious.

Yet her name is like catnip to those who love her and those who despise her. Including those in the media. So they will continue to search out and publicize every nugget from either Crazy Palin or Real American Palin, until the next Big Thing comes along. And yes Andy, that would include a story about Palin being a Delusional Baby-Switch Conspirator with her daughter. If there was even a whiff of truth to it.

But there isn’t.

So the public will have to mollify itself with the latest stories of Palin adoration or Palin embarrassment, from a media machine that is anything but reserved when it comes to trumpeting the latest Palin nugget to a hungry audience.

This entry was posted by Craig
on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 at 7:55 pm and is filed under lies.com.
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138 Responses to “Andrew Sullivan needs help!”

I’d disagree with your take on Andrew Sullivan’s stupid article, i.e. Andrew’s quote in your first paragraph does not stand on its own, and may even fail in the broader context . However, it needs to be considered in the broader context he lays out of how she is managing her image (arguably most unsuccessfully) and how Fox’s exclusivity may be playing along. Whether that’s fully accurate or not, it seems that the link Andrew provided at the start of his article belies your interpretation of what Andrew is saying ( http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/19/the-problem-with-palin/print )

Are selected medical records of candidates in the USA normally released by candidates to settle accusations? I don’t think we’d do that in Canada.

As for the delusional baby-switch conspirator angle, what were the “relevant” & “legitimate questions of fact, and that the press decided that it would never ask” but instead would “ostracize and ridicule those who did [ask]”, according to Andrew (and confirmed by Craig’s own post above.) I could use a good laugh.

I actually think she has a pretty good shot at becoming the R nominee. She’s adored by the Tea Party and the conservative base and gets them pretty fired up. If she can sharpen her debate and interviewing skills, yes, I think she has a pretty good shot.

I know we are still a ways away, but really, who else is there? Romney? he is capable but he just can’t seem to get people excited. The guy from Louisiana isn’t pretty enough, Jingle? Jindal, can’t remember. And then who are the D’s going to use? Hillary? Could the first woman president be assured?

From what I understand it’s Romney’s religous beliefs that seem to be holding him down. Which really is a shame. That Jindal guy has about as much charisma as a wet paper bag, I think that’s his problem. I think people in the R party were just looking to him right after the 2008 election because he had brown skin. I don’t hear too much about him these days.

Seriously I think she could get it. I might actually go throw 20 bucks on it for the heck of it. The odds most gambling sites are giving her make it worth a try!

For the reasons Craig stated she should make it interesting. Do you think she has had enough exposure to make her a little more bullet proof with personal issues? for instance the grandchild, is there any more traction to be gained by Democrats there or will they need fresh dirt? (which I am sure she will provide)

Forgetting for a moment that I mostly despise what she says, I’ve always thought she was a pretty good speaker and can definitely get a crowd pumped up. She’s youthful and energetic but she just lacks substance, in my book. Like I said I think she really needs to sharpen her interview and debating skills but she has time to do that.

NL, where I disagree is that if she hasn’t been able to “sharpen” her interview and debating skills by now it just is not going to happen. It might be possible to teach her to not talk if she is not sure of the right answer, but it’s not likely.

I disagree Knarly, I think you can definately learn those skills, and most of what is learned is just what you said, not talking when you don’t know the answer, something the VP, what ever his name is, hasn’t learned. She can learn and is doing what is required, getting a lot of stage time. I saw Liz Dole speak once, she gave a wonderful off the cuff speech, making everyone in the room a 10,000 feel she was talking to you alone. I found out later she practiced her speeches so well that she gave them exactly the same each time, to the point her staff said they sometimes thought they were watching a replay. Now that doesn’t make them qualified to be Pres but as we have seen with Obama it is enough to mobilize enough people to get elected.

a lot will depend on Obama’s poll numbers as the election gets closer and how we (Rs) do in the mid terms. If we do well and Obama is doing well we may use a throw away candidate.

I see what you’re saying knarly, in order to sharpen those skills she’ll have to practice. Right now she doesn’t allow questions at her events or from reporters. It’ll be hard to learn if you don’t get real world practice. Especially if she has to go up against Obama who is probably the best off the cuff question taker I’ve ever seen.

NL, well yes, that too but mostly all I’m saying is Palin has already been groomed extensively, besides all her practice at the state level.

Wasn’t the training and practice during her post on the McCain ticket as intense, rigorous and as extensive and professional as can be had anywhere in the world? You could put her through “training and practice” again, like putting a dirty stained diaper in the wash/spin/dry cycle again with more bleach, but at the end of it all you would only have a diaper.
A diaper is not formal wear.

Palin is an ignoramus, her capacity to learn is minimal. She’s a nicely rounded lump of coal rather than a diamond and she’s not even a diamond in the rough.

He is very smart, and he can articulate himself, that is a fact. He doesn’t handle questions well. Bush handled questions better than Obama. he just wasn’t good at giving prepared talks. Obama can skate around questions well, so it looks like he is answering but he really lacks much knowledge, much like Palin, and like Obama, she can learn that skill. To have someone that actually can answer a question well you have to look to someone like Newt, as you say, you may not like what he is saying but he knows the subject matter and can answer. Bill Clinton and Reagan were two that could really do it all, at least they could by this point in their presidency, they were a little clunky in the beginning. Those two could give a great speech, answer questions, and sell the product all at the same time, they were good.

I’m not saying he is bad at it, to the contrary, he is very good, there are just some that are better. What I see is he is good at reciting things he has memorized and very good at tiptoeing around things he doesn’t know. This art form is typical of congressmen, I think it is just because of the way they debate on the floor and the limited scope of bills they are involved in. Governors seem to be better at answering a broader range of questions since the job requires it, which is probably why most of our presidents come from the ranks of governors. They are better at giving more generalized answers. Of course by now a president has had a couple years experience so he will naturally get better, he will become more like a governor.

Bush just never mastered the teleprompter, Clinton and Obama did, and it was a natural for Reagan since he grew up with cue cards. Bottom line is I think Palin has the potential to be every bit as good as Obama, whatever that means. I’m just not sure if I want another good looking silver tongued devil, I think I would rather have someone that understands the issues and can’t put a sentence together to save his/her soul, but that won’t get you elected.

Fox’s “exclusivity” is a very recent event, and is hardly a reason for any limitations of the press to be able to report on her or her actions. There isn’t a day that goes by that all the cable news networks don’t mention Palin or some apparent revelation regarding her or her family. Just how many sensationalized news stories have to be created regarding her, from the Fall of 2008 until now, before this “media cocoon of protection” theory of Andrew’s can be put to sleep for good? Regardless of what people think about her, no one can say that there has been any political figure today who has been scrutinized both personally and professionally on a daily basis more than her (and including her family).

Not that she deserves sympathy. She uses the media as much as they use her. Each for their own purposes.

Andrew’s “silent media” argument is laughable. He’s really only concerned that his frevent belief of Palin being a psycho baby-switch conspirator has not been taken as seriously has he wants it to be. Dozens of reporters and professional political operatives have chased down every bit of potentially embarrassing information on the Palin’s since she was named a VP candidate. That includes all the rag magazines. That also includes ferreting info from personal and political enemies.

Levi Johnston alone has the motive and the inside knowledge to expose plenty of bombshells, including whether a special-needs baby that he conceived with Bristol was secretly taken as her own by Sarah. The best that Levi can do is suggest that Sarah offered to raise Tripp as her own child. Its a very short walk from that accusation to saying, “just like she did with Trig, who Bristol gave birth to”. But he didn’t. Why make one wacky accusation without connecting it to the other? Simply not logical.

Palin and Obama won’t give in to their own set of nutty birthers for the same reasons: responding to their requests makes it look like they have a reasonable point; anything they provide will be dismissed as a fake; and all the rest of the population who never gave the situation any thought would now begin to wonder why Obama or Palin felt the need to provide any proof.

Here is my take on why Palin prefers to not shed any more light on Trig’s birth: She choose to fly home from Texas to Alaska during the very early stages of going into labor. Some could argue that flying in such a late stage of pregnancy could have been too risky for the child and the mother. Especially a special-needs baby. It could be politically damaging to her “every life is sacred” stance if the spin could be made that she took an unsafe risk to her unborn child by insisting on flying home.

So, the less talk about Trig’s birth and the rumours surrounding it, the better.

craig, you must not be a father: Super Sarah’s water broke in Texas. Any rational person would have gone to the hospital. Immediately. You risk infection once the amniotic sack is breeched. Instead she went on to give a speech. Then she boarded a flight and went to CO (I think?) and gave another speech. Did she then go to the hospital and deliver the baby? Nope. Flew to Alaska. Did she get off the plane and head to the big city hospital? Nope. She went all the way back to her local provider… no offense, but this was her, what 4th, 5th kid? (did she already know about his downs syndrome, probably). And yet she can just hold the kid in all day after her water broke? It goes to judgement and the choices people make… bad choices, bad judgement. Please keep this trash-talkin snowbilly loon as far away from The Button as possible.

Unbelievable.

Obama’s provided his state approved birth certificate. There are two newspaper accounts from the era with his birth announcement in the papers! He is an American by birth: his mother is American. Give it up already crazy folk!

Hey craig/malkin, how are you doing on your The Very Big List of Left Wing Violence and Murder? wwnj had nothing… you?

Personally I hope you wwnjs run her in 2012, it’ll be a laugh and a half!

And assure Obama of a second term (IND voters like me think she is completely unqualified for higher office).

According to her doctor and Palin, in statements around the time of Trig’s birth, and in Palin’s book, they did indeed consult over the phone regarding the situation.

The Palin’s clearly did not want to deliver the baby anywhere but in Alaska. The fact that her water was beginning to leak was only revealed when her father happened to mention it to the press. I’m sure that Sarah didn’t intend for that fact to be made public because, a) it was a bit too personal of information than what the public needed to know, plus, b) it would possibly invite questions from the public and the press on why she chose to fly and possibly endanger her special-needs baby.

As I said before, such questions could be uncomfortable for a politician who is pro-life.

Yes, the story is that she consulted her doctor. That was not my question. My question was:

Her doctor told her it was okay to take an 8 hour flight (ten hour trip) after her water broke with her 5th baby? Really? I doubt that.

Nice try though, Craig.

Also, nice try with your “…why she chose to fly and possibly endanger her special-needs baby,” Craig. There was no “possibly”, it was clearly a decision that endangered her baby, and gravely too; and the rationale is typical Palin – incomprehensible.

Here’s what an OBGYN’s would say:
“the Dish asked several distinguished OB-GYN specialists from some of the top hospitals and medical schools in the country what they would advise any woman in such a position to do. As you might expect, every doctor urged that any woman whose water has broken or whose amniotic fluid may be leaking in the eighth month of pregnancy should immediately seek medical attention. If your water breaks at 4 am, with a special needs child, you call for an ambulance. Period. This isn’t a judgment call. It’s an emergency. The least you should do is get the fluid tested and your potential labor checked out.”

And here’s what the Anchorage Daily News reported on April 22, 2008:

Palin kept in close contact with Baldwin-Johnson. The contractions slowed to one or two an hour, “which is not active labor,” the doctor said.

“Things were already settling down when she talked to me,” Baldwin-Johnson said. Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said.

Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said. Wow, that Doctor is certainly covering her own ass.

(FYI – Only after the fact, after Palin took all the risks did her OBGYN make the statement: ‘”I don’t think it was unreasonable for her to continue to travel back,” Baldwin-Johnson said.’ A statement for which the good doctor may never earn back the respect of her colleagues.)

Aaah, but Craig says the consult to fly is also in the Book! So it must be true…

[after numerous examples]… So you simply read the book as if it is fiction and enjoy it. Or you read it as non-fiction and believe that Palin is a magical mythical figure who defies the laws of time and space and normal human nature.
Take one story that every mother will relate to: the drama of her delivery of her fifth child, Trig. She tells us that at eight months pregnant with a child she knew had Down’s syndrome and would need special care at birth, she got on a plane from Alaska to Dallas, Texas, to attend an energy conference. Most airlines won’t allow this but Alaska Airlines did. Palin then tells us that at 4am on her first night in Dallas, “a strange sensation low in my belly woke me and I sat up straight in bed”. In an interview she gave with the Anchorage Daily News just after Trig’s birth, she confirmed that she had amniotic fluid leaking at that point.

So she was a mother eight months pregnant with a special-needs child thousands of miles from home. She wakes up in the middle of the night with contractions and amniotic leakage and she tells her husband she doesn’t want to call her doctor because it would wake her up at 1am. And she is the sitting governor of a state and her doctor is a close personal friend. Not only that, but she gives the speech as planned in the afternoon, during which she makes a rather good joke. She then tells us what happens next: “Big laughs. More contractions.”

After the speech, does she then go to a local hospital to get checked out? Nah. She gets on two separate aeroplanes all the way back to Alaska, with a stopover in Seattle, because she is determined to have the child in her home town and she just knows that the contractions and amniotic leakage are not signs of imminent delivery. She has had four previous kids so she has experience. “I still had plenty of time … It was a calm, relatively restful flight home,” she explains of the next 15 hours.

You might imagine that an airline would have some qualms about letting a woman in some sort of labour at eight months, and pregnant with a Down’s syndrome child, get on a long transcontinental flight. What if the baby were born in mid-flight? The plane would have to be diverted. What if something happened to the baby? The airline could be liable. Palin never told the flight attendants. Couldn’t they tell, one might innocently ask. In the Anchorage Daily News story about the birth, Alaska Airlines said: “The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress.”

I think what her supporters need to be asking is where is all the money going from her PAC? According to records, she spent most of it – hundreds of thousands – on consultants and private jets, clothes, fancy hotels and has only given about $10,000 to actual candidates. It might actually be much lower than that.

Seems to me she’s playing her followers for fools and using their donations to live the high life instead of what she says she’s going to use the money for. I know if I donated any money to her she’d be getting a pretty nasty email from me right about now. Good lord no wonder she quit her job as gov she’s making a killing off of the sheep who follow blindly behind her.

Why is it a false comparison? I’ve put my kids at risk before, luckily it all worked out, it also all worked out because I calculated the risk and decided it was worth the risk. I have also been in situations where I didn’t do something because my kids would be in more risk than I was comfortable with, a risk I would have taken had they not been there.

Palin witheld a material fact from the airline that she knew, or ought to have known, was her obligation to advise about and which would be critical in whether Alaska airlines would allow her on to the airplane. Withholding material facts = lies.

When risks of a snowstorm on a highway are excessive, highways are closed to prevent idiots from unnecessarily “placing their lives in the hands of God.”

If one proceeds into a snowstorm and conditions worsen, one can pull over and wait it out. Air flight is nothing like that. By getting on the plane, Palin had set the ball rolling on a path with no low cost “outs”. Had the labour intensified, NO adequate medical attention to deal with the special needs baby was available when needed, she had removed her baby from the safety of medical care. The plane would have to be diverted, hundreds of people would have been seriously inconvenienced or worse. Her boarding the airplane was off the scale of selfishness. And recklessness.

And the pros / cons that went into that decision? Care to justify her taking the risks for us shcb, with a full accounting of her decision to take a 8 hour flight / 10 or more hour trip? I could use a laugh.

Sure I’ll justify it, she thought she could make it and she did. I don’t think the kid being “special needs” is pertinent here, the kid doesn’t become “special” for a couple years with his ailment as far as I know. What she did certainly opens her self to criticism and you are justified in criticizing her, I just wanted to put it in perspective.

I drove home from the lake in our motor home pulling a boat with 5 of the 8 wheel studs broken once, we made it. I helped a lady on a busy interstate once with my daughter sleeping in the back seat of the car, what if she had woke up and decided to get out of the car, she didn’t wake up, everything was fine, she’s now married with 2 and a half kids. I had a friend that pulled to the side of the road to look at an eagle and a lady rear ended his truck and killed him, he took every precaution and lost his life. Palin gambled and won, most of us do it, sometimes we lose but if we are smart we usually don’t.

shcb, you fail. We’re talking about her decision making capability, not her luck. If you can’t understand the difference I see no reason to waste my time with you.

Again, what risks did she incur to herslf and others, and for what gain?

No, she lost. Lost credibility, for reasonable people, that risk was a big stinking black mark against her. For examples, take a look at all those online community discussion forums relating to children or birthing.

FYI – what you “think” is not relevant. The fact is that special needs babies are especially vulnerabe to oxygen deprivation during child birth, that’s just one reason that the best medical facilities are critical. Any delays or complications during delivery can be dealt with by the proper facility and with experienced OBGYN’s present, don’t deal with it and the mental handicap is magnified or the brain dies. Surely her Doctor told her that when they discussed the matter?

oh, shcb, been meaning to tell you… watched the race with the old man on Sunday (well I seen that last few laps), great finish! and the gordon/johnson drama was pretty good too. now if they’d have more of that i’d def watch more lol.

I see. In your opinion it doesn’t matter how much someone’s poor choices jeapardize other people, as long as they get away with it.

To extend your analogy, you also would think it was also okay if Palin decided instead of the airplane that she would drink a gallon of whiskey and drive herself to Alaska through a blizzard, just as long as she thought she could make it and she did.

No of course not, there are limits, If she decided to have two beers and drive herself to Alaska that would be ok, the risk is manageable. Toss in the blizzard and it becomes less manageable but not insurmountable, make it a bottle of whiskey and it is unmanageable in any weather. She had kids before, she thought she knew her body, as it turns out she did. She weighed the pros and cons, having the baby with her husband and kids was a priority, the possible, underline possible, inconvenience of the other passengers was also a priority it was just way down the list. If she had popped the other kids out after a couple hours of labor all the priorities would have changed and so would have her decision, or if this was her first kid.

But yes the fact that she didn’t have the kid on the plane, the fact that the plane landed without any interruption or inconvenience to the passengers and no ill effects on the kid or her does count. She took a chance and it worked out, good for her. Teddy Roosevelt was shot, determined the bullet didn’t hit his lungs because he was a hunter not because he was a doctor, he finished giving the speech and then got medical treatment, was that reckless? Of course, but it worked out ok. Maybe you have never taken a chance in your life so this is all foreign to you but most of us take chances all the time.

But as I said, this is certainly in the area where speculation and criticism is warranted, it just needs to done in a rational manner. If you look at my motor home incident on the face it is crazy to drive a vehicle in that condition, but when you look at all I did and that particular situation and the options available, coupled with the discussions with my wife and kids before we started it was a manageable risk, but it was a risk, and one not everyone would make. That is why God gave us fee will.

So the outcome doesn’t always justify the risks taken. Seems we just disagree on the degree of risk to which she exposed her baby and the other airline passengers.

I also say she as much as lied to get on the plane, the airline should have had a say in whether they would take the risk of her flying while going into labour. Who would pay the costs if the plane needed to be diverted?

Maybe you have more information than me, can you say how long was she in labor with her previous kids based on anything that records or witnesses have substantiated? (Her word is dirt, she’s a brazen liar.) Or how well that predicts the term of the next child if that next child is ONE MONTH premature? Sounds awfully risky to me just to change a birth state.

As for the general theme of your last post, it makes sense, but I think you’ve missed a heck of a lot of my earlier points. I take far more risks than “normal” people and am extremely lucky but also have plenty of scars and old injuries to prove my risk taking. Still, I wouldn’t risk the death of an unborn child for an issue of pride, although it would be tempting in order to avoid the enormous burden of raising a special needs kid… maybe that tipped the scale of her weighing the pros and cons of the flight.

1. Born in state husband wants baby to be born in.
2. Will be with my OBGYN, family and friends (they couldn’t fly to Texas?)
3. Won’t have to travel after the delivery (or did she anyway?)
4. I’ll be a maverick.

Almost done with the con’s yet? Here’s a few to get you started, I’m sure there are many moreI haven’t thought about.

1. If labour progresses faster than I expect, the baby has a good chance of death or suffering a lifetime with more severe brain damage than if I stayed put.
2. If I go further into labour and can’t hide it anymore, the plane will need to be diverted costing hundreds of thousands of dollars
3. If I go into labour on the plane, hundreds of people will face major inconveniences and many will miss important events of their own family.
4. If I get caught, trying to board a plane while in labour it will reflect poorly on my judgement.
5. If I do not get caught, and get to a hospital in time, I’ll still sufffer criticism for putting my baby at such risk for such selfish reasons.
6. If my child is infected or more brain damaged than expected I could be blamed or held liable for contributing to his suffering by choosing to take a long flight during labour.
7. IF my baby dies, or suffers, I’ll be held to account for not asking my OBGYN for approval on whether to fly or not.

You act like I’m trying to give Palin a free pass! That is hardly the case.

I think that Palin basically told her doctor the situation, and that she really wanted to deliver the baby in Alaska. My guess is that she essentially told the doctor ‘unless you specifically tell me that I cannot get on a plane, I am going to do so. You don’t have to give me any official approval to fly, but I am going to fly’.

So, she consulted with her doctor. Her doctor didn’t specifically order her not to fly home. So she flew home, and her doctor had reasonable deniability if something happened.

Here is the crux: Did she take an insanely reckless risk, or a calculated one that many people would reasonably deem too personally risky for themselves?

There are some variances in professional opinion, due to the distance in which these ob/gyn’s are dispensing their advice.

This, from the same Sullivan article you used:

“Despite contractions and leakage of amniotic fluid/water breaking, labor had not begun. In fact, Palin later said that the labor had to be induced so that Trig was born around 29 hours after the original amniotic fluid leak/water breaking. This is remarkable given the fact that successive labors tend to be progressively shorter and shorter. A fifth child is usually delivered rather swiftly. But it is not impossible. From one OB-GYN specialist consulted by the Dish:

It’s very possible that it could take that long, especially if it was a small [amniotic fluid] leak. Again, there is something of a dividing line based on the gestational age and other complicating factors.”

Let me explain once again, and very s-l-o-w-l-y for some people:

I am not defending Palin’s actions as being perfectly reasonable. It isn’t a decision that I would be comfortable with for my own wife. I think Palin herself knows that her decision was one that could be open for criticism by many people. That is partly why she never volunteered that information herself. I never understood why her political enemies, who threw every other personal attack at her (both real and rumoured) during the campaign, never leveraged this issue. How could a Right to Life activist put her own baby at such risk, just to be sure he was born in Alaska? Isn’t every life sacred?

Sure seems like a awkward thing for her to have had to address.

Oh well……

Anyways, we have tread quite far from the point of my post, which was that Sullivan believes that the press has somehow been soft on her in order to maximize ratings by not causing offence to her.

That’s pretty much what I was going to say, I have no issue with anything you said Knarly, it’s just a matter of degree. If we took all your points and gave them a 1 to 10 scale of the risk level, and then gave them another 1 to 10 scale of priorities you, Sarah and me would have very different numbers. In the end you would have stayed where you were and the baby would have come over a day later and you would have been happy you didn’t take the chance, she was happy she did take that chance because of her priorities, I think it is enough of a wash I would have supported either of your decisions. But to Craig’s point, it isn’t near enough to disqualify someone from a job, any job. And the thing with Obama not being born here is similar, partisans are making a bigger deal out of it than it is in both cases.

Craig, fine then you just seemed overly defensive and dismissive of any risk to the child – as if premature babies with Down’s syndrome were delivered on airplanes regularly with good results.

You give a much kinder speculation of what part of the conversation was like. I’d guess that Palin said to her Doc: “If I were to ask you whether it was safe for me to get on the plane now, I’m not asking but if I did ask that then what might you say?” The Doc would say that since the baby was a month premature then if labour progressed quickly the result would likely be disasterous. etc.

shcb, as you state, Palin would have ranked these as low risk or low prioirity and that makes many people aghast.

1. If labour progresses faster than I expect, the baby has a good chance of death or suffering a lifetime with more severe brain damage than if I stayed put.
2. If I go further into labour and can’t hide it anymore, the plane will need to be diverted costing hundreds of thousands of dollars
3. If I go into labour on the plane, hundreds of people will face major inconveniences and many will miss important events of their own family.

from a practical standpoint most of the people that are aghast wouldn’t vote for her anyway. Even the pro lifers Craig is refering to will hold it against her, but in the end they will vote for her, I mean really, are they going to vote for a Democrat?

Ha! That was pretty good! I get a chuckle from that Slap Chop dude’s commercials.

I’ll probably be watching that race on saturday, my cousin is coming up for the Freedom March (for the decriminalization of cannabis) and he’s a big nascar buff so he’ll want to watch it, while we much out on junk food. so don’t blame me if i can’t remember any of the race ;)

Oh, and since this post is about Palin somebody should ask her how that “drill, baby, drill” thingy is working out. More like “spill, baby, spill.”

Good to see the Obama admin approved that massive wind project off Massachusetts.

I’d like to see the cost comparison of exploring, drilling, building the infrastructre out in the ocean, the costs to clean up spills, operating and then the eventual tear down costs once the oil is gone of an offshore oil project versus building offshore wind turbines that will run forever (with routine maintenance and upgrades) and never cause even close to the amount of damage to the environment.

That would be an interesting report, I’m sure both sides of the argument have done such studies :) my guess is like any emerging technology the wind isn’t even close to being as efficient and may be more destructive to the environment even with an occasional oil spill taken into account.

We’re working on some things now that are pretty cool, they are proprietary so I can’t say what it is but we are running into the problem that the technologies we are merging are so new that the end product is more novelty than a real solution but if you want to get above the curve you have to keep in front of the wave. With the progress they are making the real solution should be economically and practically realized in a few years, so we keep plugging away on our end.

The appealing part of oil is that after the well is drilled and future capping/cleanup costs are accounted for the earnings are still fantastic.

The Cantarell Oil Field in Gulf of Mexico cost approx. $5 bn to develop and produces 772,000 bopd for gross revenues at say $40/bbl for that crude would be about $30 million per day or $1 billion per year. So the overall investment (including capital reserves for end-of-life well capping & contingencies for environmental damages) would have about a 6 or 7 year payback period after which it’s all gravy for the next 20 years or so, hence the drill baby drill refrain.

If you want to get in on that action all you have to do is rent a rig in the Gulf to drill you a deep well, it’ll only cost about $500,000 per day to rent the rig.

The thing with wind etc. is that the power produced per day is not as enormous as what oil provides. So for the same $ investment the payback takes longer.

The appealing part of oil is that after the well is drilled and future capping/cleanup costs are accounted for the earnings are still fantastic.

The Cantarell Oil Field in Gulf of Mexico cost approx. $5 bn to develop and produces 772,000 bopd for gross revenues at say $40/bbl for that crude would be about $30 million per day or $1 billion per year. So the overall investment (including capital reserves for end-of-life well capping & contingencies for environmental damages) would have about a 6 or 7 year payback period after which it’s all gravy for the next 20 years or so, hence the drill baby drill refrain.

If you want to get in on that action all you have to do is rent a rig in the Gulf to drill you a deep well, it’ll only cost about $500,000 per day to rent the rig.

The thing with wind etc. is that the power produced per day is not as enormous as what oil provides. So for the same $ investment the payback takes longer.

Enky, you have to figure the unit of energy produced divided by the amount of raw material and energy to make the windmill/oil rig, amount of land used etc. You have to look at the whole picture not just a beautiful sunset behind a glistening wind farm in one picture and an oil covered duck in the other.

shcb, good question, and I agree that nuclear is tempting. However, I don’t know if an answer is possible because it is hard to quantify Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island even the leakages at Chalk River facility; plus I fear / suspect that as the number of N facilities increases the probability of another disaster increases more than a linear rate due to human complacency & diffusion of expertise amoungst facilities. Also, why there are nuclear power plants along the San Andreas fault (and other similar disaster prone areas in Japan and China) just blows my mind. Maybe Rumsfeld or Cheney had a hand in those decisions?

even if nuclear were the handsdown best decision from an ecconomic standpoint it doesn’t mean it’s the best decision but I would like to know how it compares. but not so much as to go look very hard :)

Nuclear is more expensive initially but cheap to operate. I don’t think the paybacks are as quick as oil investments, iirc investments in nuclear power plants typically have paybacks in the 15 – 20 year range but then they produce at a high rate for another 30 years. So there is a potential for huge losses if you invest big in nuclear and then alternative energy sources continue to decrease in cost…

The economics of nuclear power is not simple to evaluate, because of high capital costs for building and very low fuel costs. Comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear plants. See Economics of new nuclear power plants.

Depending on the source different energy return on energy investment (EROI) are claimed. Advocates (using life cycle analysis) argue that it takes 4–5 months of energy production from the nuclear plant to fully pay back the initial energy investment.[19] Opponents claim that it depends on the grades of the ores the fuel came from, so a full payback can vary from 10 to 18 years, and that the advocates’ claim was based on the assumption of high grade ores (the yields are getting worse, as the ores are leaner; for less than 0.02% ores, the yield is less than 50%).[20]

I understand that oil rigs can produce huge profits, but not forever. I do know though, that the wind has been blowing on this planet for billions of years and if a windmill falls over in the ocean it wouldn’t be an environmental catastrophe. Same with the sun, pretty sure it’s been shining on this planet for billions of years as well. Ocean tides? All of these can be added into the mix and not spew crap into our atmosphere, like mercury and CO2 and they are sustainable – they never run out!

I also read an article recently on a company that’s using the warm water in the South Pacific and Caribbean to generate power. The water is very warm at the top but very cold several hundred metres down and they use that somehow to spin turbines. I’ll try to find it, it was pretty interesting.

One thing to add to the nuke equation: what to do with all the waste (with half life that stretches into the tens or hundreds of thousands of years… ) Thorium based reactors might improve the nuke outlook, but with India selling them instead of US…

On the other hand, Bill Gates is excited about a new type of nuclear reactor that would eat spent conventional nuke waste as its fuel. Not sure about what by-products would be left, but if one of the smartest guys on the planet is interested there is probably something there.

We have to stop powering our civilization on burning rocks and gunk. Easy to put that on a bumper sticker, harder to not have the bumper (I can say that from experience, having given up one of our IC autos – waiting for the Leaf or Volt to come out – lots of biking and walking)

Of course those considerations are overwhelmingly key for reasonable people in choosing between energy options, however I was talking to shcb. He. like Craig, dismiss or can’t comprehend that it’s stupid to risk of getting on an eight hour flight while labour is starting during the eighth month of a pregnancy, so shcb is not likely to be concerned about radioactive materials with a half life of 100,000 years being trucked around the country and buried in holes for our ancestors to deal with.

Anyway, nuclear doesn’t stack up very well due to it’s high initial costs (making the economics highly dependent on capital assumptions) and long paybacks of up to 20 years (increasing the risk that alternative energy will become cheaper in the meantime and undercut demand / cost recovery of the nuclear investment)

Returning for a moment to the palin delivery story: this was her, what? 4th or 5th child? she knew it was a special needs child? yet she takes a 8-10 hour journey by plane after her water broke?

Something fishy about that… either she isn’t the actual mother (can we see a DNA test if we show you Obama’s birth certificate – available on line btw) or she took some absolutely crazy risks.

Either way, it goes to judgement (or lack thereof).

Personally I pray every day that the wwnjs run her in 2012: it’ll be a cakewalk for Obama’s second term. Plus it’ll be the best season of The Daily Show ever. The debates would be entertaining as well.

Enk, Not just special needs which would require immediate medical attention if there were even small complications with the delivery, but the llabour was a month or so premature virtually guaranteeing that special medical attention would be necessary.

So she takes the baby as far as possible away from that medical attention.

Obviously she cared more about her husband and his secessionist buds having a hissy fit if the child wasn’t born in Alaska than any conerns for the child.

Well it’s started, the oil spill is Obama’s Katrina. Why did it take so long for the government to act? Why aren’t they doing more? Why are they doing so much? Why are they only doing the wrong thing? Rush decided today that this is proof that Obama really doesn’t want the job of president, he just wants to change America, make it socialized, destroy free enterprise etc.

It looks like this was sabotage now, if you look at this picture right at the lower left corner you can see that the bubbles are upside down, a noted ocean scientist, F.H. Leghorn, says this is never found in nature but Biden was heading a super secret left wing faction of the CIA months before the inauguration that was developing the technology to suck oil from the pores of the well casing. The fire was all done on a green screen, there was never an oil platform there, only an old capped well. Here are official documents showing the well was capped just before the war of 1812. This is all being done so the lefty’s that have so heavily invested in green technologies can reap a huge profit. As we speak billions are being laundered through Icelandic off shore accounts, the “volcano” was a ruse to divert attention, in a short period of time we will be hearing that computers in Iceland have “failed to function” but we all know what that is code for. The cover up is just starting.

Now don’t ask me for citations, that was from my fertile mind (natural fertilizer of course, male bovine variety) first paragraph is most true.

I’ve never really thought of this before been though I’ve worked in the oil industry (e.g. when 17 as the new guy on the rig I cleared a 100 x 100 oil spill on on a well lease over the span of about a week using a shovel and a bucket, while the other guys snickered…) so the answer is undoubtably simple, but why can’t and armada of pumper ships suck up the oil off the surface and from the well hole and flow it into into holding tanks then spit out the seawater and reclaim the oil into a tanker ship?

There’s also no evidence that Iraq, North Korea, or Iran have anything to do with this, as far as I can tell. Let’s see… amateur? bbq propane tanks? fertilizer? gas? alarm clocks with batteries attached as improvised detonators? Circumstantially it sounds like a tea party moran to me. Wait for better evidence, but I bet this is another wwnj out to kill leberals.

I’ve never been anywhere near an oil spill but I’ll take a stab at your technical question, my guess is that the oil is so dispersed by the time it gets to the surface that even though it is millions of gallons it is in billions or trillions of gallons of water and you just can’t effectively skim the oil, it isn’t until it reaches shore where it condenses again. I don’t know why they can’t shove a pipe over the top of the well head with a flexible hose and take most of it to the surface, a hundred by hundred foot steel box with a hole in the top. I’m sure we are just way oversimplifying the problem.

I read today the oil leaking was equal to two Olympic size pools, I don’t know if that was total or per day, but at any rate it doesn’t seem like a lot of fluid to somehow control.

shcb, the oil dispersion must be the limiting facor, hence the booms to try to contain it so it can be mopped up. Volume Olympic pool = 660,000 us gal, by the way, them olympic sized pools are big. Dep horizon: “underwater oil well that’s gushing 42,000 gallons a day from the site of a wrecked drilling platform”
& dispersion:
“The oil spill already stretches across more than 1,800 square miles of water in the Gulf Of Mexico, ” So, basically that is a 1,800 square miler zone of death for flora or fauna crossing the ocean surface.

if anything good comes from this maybe they can make such a device and have a few handy. I wouldn’t think it would even have to be steel, some sort of cloth (high tech of course) like a big parachute with weights, maybe a tube 10 feet in diameter that just dumps into an open bottom ship. don’t know, thinking aloud.

I had heard they wanted to drill another hole to relieve the pressure but that was going to take months. In the future maybe we should already have that hole in the groound and tapped off a half mile away.

the double hulled tanker seems like such a simple idea now but someone had to think of it and someone had to force the oil companies to do it, yes you heard it from me, a proper use of government.

yes… & drilling that second hole as a contingency ahead of time hmmm, it would almost double the cost of completing each deep sea well, hmmm no, I don’t think president Palin would go for mandating that kind of caution.

tube to the surface would need to be plenty tough to withstand subsurface currents and deal with the psi pressures of 5000 feet of ocean overhead. Wish it could work but if it was feasible they’d be all over that idea.

Hmmm, what would Palin suggest? I know! What about detonating several nuclear bombs around the well bore to seal off the hole? That’d work, you becha!

hey, just learned they do drill those second wells as a contingency when working in Arctic waters, the industry started to lobby against doing so last fall:

Federal NDP Leader Jack Layton said his party will press this week for emergency hearings before the Commons Natural Resources committee to explore what should be done to toughen rules and practices governing petroleum activity in the North.

…

Mr. Layton cited efforts by major oil companies to relax safety regulations for offshore drilling in the Arctic Beaufort Sea. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill comes from a well operated by British Petroleum, which is also among firms pushing for an exemption up North.

…

Current federal rules in Canada require energy companies to complete a “relief well,” a drilling technique that helps to stop oil leaks, in the same season as an original well is drilled. Many Arctic nations, including the United States, Norway and Greenland, have created such requirements as a means of ensuring that oil blowouts can be controlled before winter ice halts an emergency response.

Starting last fall, a group of companies operating in Canada began an effort to persuade the National Energy Board that technology has advanced so far that relief wells are no longer needed in the Arctic. New deep offshore wells in the Beaufort Sea will take two or three years to drill, making it impossible to drill a relief well in the same season, they say.

Mr. Layton said Canadians need a national debate on the risks of further drilling in the Beaufort.

“We’re going to be urging that experts be brought forward … so that Canadians can know what the decisions are before us and then we’ll design a plan accordingly so that we can try to prevent [a repeat of] what’s taking place in the Gulf.”

shcb – turns out they are “all over it”:
“But the biggest leak, at the end of the riser pipe, which Mr. Fryar said was the source of most of the spewing oil, cannot be shut off this way. The company intends to address that leak by lowering a containment dome over it and then pumping the oil to the surface. That effort is still at least six days away, Mr. Fryar said. Another containment dome, for the third leak, which is on the riser near the wellhead, would follow two to four days after the first. ”

well, there you go. If they can’t get the second hole in the same season they can put it in the second season, that seems a reasonable compromise, at least we are mitigating the problem. I think Palin has been for environmental regulations of the oil industry, she wants to drill for sure, but in a responsible way, I saying that from memory but I wouldn’t paint her with such a broad brush just because we are conservative and pro growth doesn’t mean we are stupid about it.

shcb, I find it kind of ironic how you and Rush are blaming the government for a private sector disaster… Are you saying the government (i.e. taxpayers) should be charged with this clean up? Do they need to create the Department of Oil Spills? Doesn’t the oil industry – which made, I dunno, about a trillion dollars last year have plans and equipment in place in case something like this happens? Sure as hell doesn’t look like it.

Until they can prove that I’ll be working my ass off to make sure no holes are getting drilled in the Arctic, which belongs to Canada (and maybe Russia too) by the way. So please tell those greedy oil companies down there to stay the f*ck away.

No I was just comparing it to Katrina, why did it take Bush so long to react? Well, why did it take Obama so long? Why isn’t the oil industry made to make sure this didn’t happen? Well, why wasn’t New Orleans made to keep the dikes in better shape? Why wasn’t the military mobilized faster after Katrina? Well why wasn’t the military mobilized sooner after this oil spill, why did it take a week for Biden to authorize C130s. That type of thing.

The fact is these things take time to analyze and mobilize, I’m sure Obama did the best he could under the circumstances just as Bush did the best he could, could either have been handled better, sure, everything is better in hindsight.

I think the major difference is that they were warned repeatedly for days leading up to Katrina that it was going to be bad. Whereas the company responsible for this spill took days to even determine what was going on.

Excellent question though about why the oil industry isn’t made to make sure this stuff doesn’t happen. I’m furious that companies are allowed to build these things out in the water but seem absolutely clueless about how to handle an event like this. No emergency plans, no clue, no brains.

The only silver lining I can see is that this is galvanizing the public to move away from fossil fuels. So that’s good. And just wait till the price of oil/gasoline goes up because of this, you be seeing some anger then!

Don’t expect oil prices to go up much as a result of this, haven’t heard about gulf of mexico production been shut it like when hurricanes hit so there’s no big supply impact, of course longer term costs may increase if more stringent environmental protection regs are put into place which will, as shcb is sure to point out, be passed along to the consumer, but which will also, as shcb is sure to NOT point out, ultimately be less costly to everyone than the environmental nightmares from such spills. On the plus side, there should no longer be any need to use cooking oil when frying gulf cost seafood.

BP’s share price is down about 10 or 15% from just prior to the explosion, so that gives an indication of the relatively low economic impact to the oil industry relative to other operations, despite this apparently being a disaster of epic proportions to the US Gulf Coast..

As to why emergency plans are not in place, my understanding is that they are and it all looks good on paper, however the “problem” is that the need for such emergency measures is quite rare so the people become complacent and plans are forgotten and equipment difficult to locate immediately when required. Besides, the rig had like Three redundant safety measures for every critical function to ensure that a disaster like this could never happen.

People who believe in the infallibility of their systems or plans are so stupid, right shcb?

Knarly, remember the Titanic? when I make a piece of equipment that will replace something else, I always tell people to keep the old one around if they can cause mine will eventually break at the worst time.

NL, the counter to this and Katrina is this was very isolated, Katrina was a major part of the whole coast, more localized can be handled better with swift action, but I’m not criticizing here, I’m just saying much of the criticism of Bush was unjustified, some was, but not all.

that’s right, bush should have been criticized for the FEMA problems but not for the people in the Super Dome. I just want the criticism to be fair.

I heard something today about there was a plan to put a boom around a situation like this since the mid nineties that would have stoppet 95% of the spill, but it wasn’t done for several days when it should have been done in several hours? don’t know particulars and I just got home after driving 14 hours in the last 48 and spending the day in the hospital with my dad so good night friends. maybe tomorrow

I heard there were weather issues with associated waves that negated the boom getting into place or working even if it were put into place, plus you’d be talking about a large area (5 to 20 sq mi) even initially… remember the leak is 5000 ft below the surface s oit may be difficult to determine where the oil will surface due to the currents / tides and basic stochastic variations through a depth of almost a mile of ocean; and besides, didn’t Bush give the direct order to herd people into the superdome (or was that Cheney?)

Good points, just something I heard or read briefly. Perhaps the plan they were refering to was for shallow wells.

I think the Super Dome was all local until the Army arived a week later. And that only after the Gov authorized it a few hours before. That is the part that Bush was unjustly criticized for, there was plenty of blame to go around but put it where it belongs, just as there is plenty to go around here.

he’s fine, it was just a checkup but it had to be done 2 hours from his home in case they needed to do something to him, all’s well, thanks for the concern.

got the joke now, a little slow, I’ve always said I don’t the show “the office” because they don’t have a laugh track and I’m not bright enough to know when to laugh without one.

If I’m a little distracted in the next couple weeks excuse me please, Atlanta on Sunday, back Friday, drive to Kansas for my niece’s graduation Saturday, home sunday, Louisville Tuesday home late Wednesday night, not sure if I’m excited or dreading it.

Oh my, goes over a trillion, puts it in a new league, new rules. But who could have predicted taking the profit out of something would actually raise the cost of that thing, hmmm, oh well, guess all the other socialized countries going broke, us going broke, them wanting us to bail them out once again has got the boy worried, so now he wants congress to do the impossible and pay for something socialized without cutting services. Oh my.

Deserve it, we don’t want it!!!!! we can take care of ourselves, we have jobs. give us MSAs and we wouldn’t even have to depend on our employer running our health care, even better, I manage my auto insurance, I think I can manage a health policy

Dying from preventable illness is the American Way. All you damn Socialists, with your being alive and basic human rights. Fuh, we don’t need none of that. Being the world’s richest third world country is the root of American Exceptionalism. Afterall, I, as a brainwashed conservative who regurgitates AM radio talking points, am eminently qualified to speak on behalf of all Americans. Those opinion polls that showed 60% of Americans wanted a public option were lies created by non-“Real Americans”. You betcha. In Limbaugh’s name we pray, Amen.

I love the polls that claim a majority of American’s are unhappy with the HCR law: what nearly every commentator who repeats that stat doesn’t add is the fact that more people are unhappy because it doesn’t go far enough. Add me to that percentage. I am unhappy that there is no public option or Medicare buy-in.

I run my little company and our healthcare premiums rise 10 to 20% a year.
Every year.

This was no big deal in the Clinton years when the economy was booming. But the bush years and Great Recession has moved this from annoyance to crushing financial burden. I just don’t get why we won’t give basic healthcare to everyone and screw the ‘insurance’ companies (like they have done a great job? at making profits from human suffering). It would cost less than the emergency care really sick people get now (which would you rather pay for: a yearly check up and mb a statin script? or a massive heart attack and quad bypass?)

Actually, I didn’t mean that in any racial context, I use “the boy” for all races, I know it has that connotation, but I just meant it as a guy who is a little inexperienced and full on himself as young men tend to be.

Hey, the G8/G20 is coming to my neighbourhood next month and I wasn’t going to protest but now they moved the Jays/Phillies game to Philly cuz of security concerns which really pisses me off because it’s not like anything is going to get accomplished anyways. Now we don’t to welcome Roy Hallday back to the Skydome so…

I’m gearing up baby! So far my girlfriend has made a Spill Baby Spill sign with a picture of a dead sea turtle on it. Hey jbc, want me to hold up a “lies.com” sign? Talk about a worldwide audience! lol

Way off topic, but may be interesting read to some of you for different reasons… brief context: Atlantic salmon (less tasty but bigger fish) being raised in open net farming pens in bays on the pacific coast have lots of problems, major issue is sea lice being rampant in the pens and infecting wild salmon that swim past causing devastation to the natural stocks, lots of other issues like the farmed salmon are fed fish pellets made from fish harvests that used to feed south american villages but which those villagers can no longer afford to buy as its more profitable to gind the fish into meal to raise the farmed salmon for our restaurants, antibiotics thrown into the pens causing problems with other species or the huge dead zones under the pens and extending throughout the bays that were previously very productive shellfish habitats collected by first nations peoples but no longer viable, plus there is specious but perhaps verifiable anecdotal evidence of Atlantic salmon escaping and interbreeding with spawning pacific salmon -supposedly impossible but some say it has already happened…anyway the less profitable alternative for the salmon farming industry is a more expensive (2x the cost ?) for salmon pens inland & thus safely removed from interfering with the natural stocks (which have in fact been suffering profoundly for various reasons over the years.) So that’s the context. The beef is that our local newspaper seems to have a bias (yes, I know that’s shocking.) Here is the item about an anti-salmon farming rally that might be interesting to some of you for different reasons (or not)”

Thanks to Jack Etkin. I can confirm Jack’s report. I am no expert at number guessing, but there were obviously way more than 1,000 people at the Legislature. My best guess was 3,000, constant with a small flow of people leaving and arriving.

It is hard to understand why the government and the major media are so protective of the Norwegian owned salmon farms as they destroy our major salmon runs. Apart from political contributions, the only reason I can find is that they are so attached to corporate capitalism that anything corporations do is perceived as inherently good, however little benefit it brings or how much harm it does.

Fish farms are destroying what is left of our native salmon which support the whole ecosystem as well as our native culture, just as they have destroyed local fisheries in Europe and Chile. They provide very few jobs, and the profits go to foreign executives and shareholders. Why don’t we make them move their pens ashore or shut them down? There is no pro-survival answer.

Why is the Times Colonist lying about the number of people at the ‘save the salmon’ rally last week?

Misleading people is one of the Corporate Media’s most important jobs. And the Times Colonist did a good job of misleading people recently on the subject of salmon farms and the threat they present to our wild salmon…

Alexandra Morton’s walk to save BC’s wild salmon was an example of this media manipulation of the truth.

Alexandra Morton has been a leader of the fight to save the wild salmon – her efforts culminating in this ‘walk’ to build public support to get rid of the fish farms that are contaminating and killing BC’s wild salmon.

So how did the Times Colonist present their message to the people of Victoria?

Here are some examples of their Corporate ‘misinformation’ in the Sunday, May 9 paper:

1. They say ‘Nearly 1000 people crowded Government St yesterday …': That number is an outright lie. There is no way the crowd was less than 1000 people. It was at least double or triple that number according to most people (including Global TV which reported the police estimate I believe), and quite possibly 4 or more times that number. The real question is; why would the Times Colonist deliberately downplay – lie about – the number of people who were there? In my opinion it was done to make the public think that very few people were there and therefore the whole thing is of little importance.

2. The TC story then goes on to present a ‘balanced story’ about the science and the issues of salmon farming, quoting extensively from the Salmon Farming Industry and a provincial scientist. The problem is that the TC is always happy to present both the truth and the lies to their readers without any differentiation. If some people – the Industry and the province – are allowed to lie, while others tell the truth, it is very hard for ‘truth’ to win in that kind of an argument. The Salmon Farming Industry is Corporate, we all know that the Corporations will say anything and lie about anything to get what they want, their record is extensive, there is simply no doubt that they always say that their poisons are safe. There is NO REASON to believe anything that Corporations say about science or safety, but the TC happily presents their arguments as if there is no background of Corporate lies whatsoever. And, sad to say, the provincial governments record is no better. Alexandra Morton may not be right in what she is saying, but you can be sure that she is doing her best to present the truth as she sees it; she is not being paid to lie which is completely true of the Corporations.

3. Jobs: The TC article goes into the jobs issue as well. It is important to realize that the TC does not give a damn about jobs except when ‘jobs’ can be used to promote Corporate profits. They have done this for decades. When people were trying to protect some remnants of old-growth forests 20 years ago the TC would show pictures of the families of those who were ‘going to be laid off’ – as if they cared about them. But a few years later, when the Corporations were laying these same people off by the thousands, the TC didn’t seem to care about the families then. And it’s the same now; hundreds of provincial government jobs right here in Victoria are disappearing, but they don’t seem to matter at all to the TC, the salmon farm jobs however are well worth mentioning, and in fact they even double or triple the number of those jobs just to make them seem bigger. This is the same TC that promotes the Free Trade deals which are sending our jobs overseas by the tens of thousands. Those jobs also don’t seem to matter.

4. Actually though, I don’t care about the lies and misinformation the TC always puts out; it is their right to lie and misinform. The important thing is for the rest of us to know that WE DON’T HAVE A FREE PRESS IN CANADA. THE TIMES COLONIST DOES NOT WORK FOR US AND IT IS NOT OUR FRIEND. IT IS CORPORATE, AND ITS JOB IS TO PUT OUT CORPORTE PROPAGANDA, WHICH IT DOES VERY WELL. JUST DON’T BELIEVE TOO MUCH OF IT AND WE WILL ALL BE A LOT BETTER OFF….. AND PLEASE SUPPORT INDEPENDENT MEDIA.
Jack Etkin

You still seem to be looking for examples, here is Muslim liberal that wants to exterminate all the Jews just like the terrorist organization she supports. Exterminate the Jews, hmm, can’t remember, didn’t someone else want to do that?

I am not looking for examples of wwnj (or ienj) violence, but they do seem to be in the news with increasing frequency.

Where do you see that she is a liberal? That makes no sense. So now I have to answer to any nutty thing some wacko from Hezbollah says? No. This woman says the Muslim student association is hosting a h!tler youth week? wtf? she is much more a right winger than anyone here on lies.com

So, how many people has this loathsome woman killed? Injured?
None? wow No one? huh
Is she even an American? She shows up in a hijiblyjab (or whtvr the f they call that doo rag thingee, which reminds me: are all country singers mooselmen? those bandanas look jes like that hibillybob or whtvr u call it)

I find her speech hateful (and confrontational… just like Horowitz’s and Beck’s and Limpbaugh’s and Savage’s and Rosen’s and Coulter’s and Malkin’s and Palin’s) and to some extent, hate speech (like yours) is protected speech. Within limits.

Trying to paint every whacko mooselman as a liberal (and vice versa?) might work for you fauxnews morans, but it has no basis in reality.

So when the audience groans or boos while this ienj talks, that makes her liberal?
As usual, you make no damn sense at all.

wwnjs are increasingly violent and there are many examples in the US. You have yet to furnish even a single example of a left wing nutter going postal on right wingers (or even normal folks) in the last two years (or even the last ten, but if we go back ten, let’s go back to the OK federal bldg bombing by those two wwnjs)

so…. that ienj is liberal because of the school administrators?
seriously, you make less and less sense with each post

You have yet to furnish even a single example of a left wing nutter going postal on right wingers (or even normal folks) in the last two years (or even the last ten) in the US. It has been months and the wwnj violence examples just keep coming. The latest: a wwnj refuses to talk to a census worker, pulls a gun on her and then when the cops arrive, wwnj pulls a shotgun on the police and gets herself killed. Seriously, I fully expected you to dig up a couple examples and I’d have to say, well ok, but there are *more* examples of wwnj violence… amazing you haven’t been able to find even *one*.

Just to point out the errors in your latest ‘example':

no one was killed by the ienj’s outrageous opinions
(same w Horrorwitz’s hate speech, execrable but protected speech afaik)

no one was injured

we have no idea if this ienj is even an American

oh wait, she hurt David Horrorwitz’s feelings or said mean things
or are you just outraged at her (lack of) fashion sense?

stupid is as stupid does
I view this sort of suicide by stupidity as evolution in action

Personally I hope millions upon millions of you wwnjs refuse to answer the census: that way we’ll gain more reps, more of our tax dollars will be spent in our states and so on. Currently CA gets back something like $0.78 on every dollar we send to the feds http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html [2005}

To get back to the grand challenge: can you find even one US left wing nutter killing or injuring US wwnjs (I’ll even open it up to normal folks as well) in the last 2 years (again, I’ll open it up to the last 10 years) in America for ideological reasons? So far I have something like 10 examples and you have… none.

So we’re killing more of you that you are killing us, sounds good to me.

I didn’t answer any questions on the census that had to deal with race, just didn’t think it was proper or any of their damn business, their are two of us in this household and we are both US citizens, done.

What can I say Enky, you have a student that wants to eliminate an entire race of people, the same people one of the most evil person to live wanted to eliminate, a school administrator that evidently sees little wrong with that view since he/she didn’t do much about it and a school administration that didn’t do anything to that administrator, all of them liberal, with the possible exception of the student. But that isn’t enough, you are setting the rules so you are going to win, you won, done. Happy now?

I think normal people are going to start pushing back on the wwnj fringe elements like yourself. Hate speech like

“So we’re killing more of you that [sic] you are killing us, sounds good to me.”

doesn’t endear you to many normal folk. I’ve lost track of how many times right wing nutjobs like you (including you of course) have threatened to kill me (or worse;) Fact is, I haven’t seen any left wing nutter killing wwnjs (or even normal people) in the US in decades.

There is no equivalency: wwnjs are violent and murderous dipshits who should be shouted down, laughed off stage and marginalized as much as humanely possible. Liberals, progressives and normal people want cooperation, understanding, growth, wealth, science and the Enlightenment to guide us. You nutters iz jes afraid Obama is comin fer yer boomstick (and the socialimalism!) Just admit it: to a ton of you teabaggers this is all about President N!gger being in *your* White House. The majority of the minority? mb, mb not

I have no idea what you are saying in your second post. Please use English, not hate speech. Horrorwitz is a scam artist who uses confrontational and objectionable speech to fleece rubes like you. He made all the wild claims. The ienj just agreed with him. And honestly wtf cares what some terrorist group of morans wants or doesn’t want: it’s not the 4th century. Go live in a cave in Somalia if you don’t like our Enlightenment.

Hey how about that Muslim American Miss America!?! I loved seeing her in the bikini contest: if this is how muslims assimilate, then western civilization should have no problem absorbing yet another kooky religion.

no one was killed by the ienj’s outrageous opinions
(same w Horrorwitz’s hate speech, execrable but protected speech afaik)

no one was injured

we have no idea if this ienj is even an American

I’ve lost track of how many times right wing nutjobs like you (including you of course) have threatened to kill me (or worse;) Fact is, I haven’t seen any left wing nutter killing wwnjs (or even normal people) in the US in decades.

No one has been killed or injured by any of my statements so why is it ok for her to support a group bent on genocide, supporting a group that not only talks about it but has been actively perusing that goal by actually killing people for decades.

I’ve never threatened anyone except in jest, which you promptly take out of context or blow out of proportion. Of course when one is playing Calvin Ball one can do that.

You support a group that preaches violence (you revel in it) against unbelievers.
“So we’re killing more of you that [sic] you are killing us, sounds good to me.”
ring a bell?
doesn’t sound even remotely like a joke…

However if you actually, you know, read what I wrote instead of inventing a strawman for you to savage, you would see that I actually included a smiley face
here:

I’ve lost track of how many times right wing nutjobs like you (including you of course) have threatened to kill me (or worse ;) Fact is, I haven’t seen any left wing nutter killing wwnjs (or even normal people) in the US in decades.

That was from your lil joke about how I should be impaled at the stake or worse… jes a lil joke fellers har har!

wwnjs are just as violent, intolerant and whacked as their counterparts: the islamic extremist nut jobs. Normal people abhor violence and use it only as a last resort or in self defense (see: pinky biter)

wwnjs are violent in word and deed. I fear that another OK bombing will happen before the country wakes up to the domestic terrorism threat from within.

Unless of course you can come up with all those examples of lwnjs going postal in the last 2 years (in the US, on US citizens).

And remember us libs is super duper scared of Super Sarah! please don’t run her in 2012! I think I jes wet m’self in trrrrr of her brilliance… and please don’t for a minute moderate the Rethugglican party, go even further to the extreme right (what’s next, armbands?)

“Normal people abhor violence and use it only as a last resort or in self defense” you have said recently that you consider liberals “normal” so I assume you are saying that sentence applies to liberals, and I would agree with that. Conservatives do believe in preemptive attacks, in that respect we are more violent than liberals, in most respects we are more violent than liberals, that is what gives liberals the ability to be liberal for the most part is our willingness to do violence in your behalf.

Interesting story about liberals and violence; a friend and colleague from Holland was over here this week, in the middle of a marathon 4 hour dinner and picture show of his WW II vehicles he restores was a picture of his young son with am M1 Garand, it seems they were at a museum and the young lad got to hold the gun. Bart said “he could tell I was very unhappy that he was enjoying holding the weapon”. On the way back to the hotel he asked if I owned a weapon, it was an odd question for an old farm boy to be asked and his English is just broken enough that I didn’t catch it at first. He said he had never fired a weapon or even held one, I then realized what he was asking, so the next day I took a couple weapons to work, unfortunately meetings took the whole day and we didn’t get to go shoot them. I thought it was a little hypocritical that he would chastise his son for doing something he wanted to do.

ah yes, the old ‘libs can be soft cuz we iz so mean an tough an stuff!’ meme
allow me to answer in three simple letters: FDR (that cripple would’ve kicked your ass six ways from Sunday fat boy)

I can’t make heads or tails of your little anecdote. Kids love teh boomsticks, they get to imagine using it in righteousness. An adult knows a bullet can end a life. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

I am an excellent shot btw. The key is to control your breathing and squeeze smoothly at just the right time. Rifles of course, pistols are for chumps. ;)

As a boy I used to beg my mom to drive us down to an armor museum in KY. On one of these trips we discovered the M551 Sheridan’s escape hatch was open. We crawled inside and had a grand time (must have made my mom nervous when we disappeared for that long). A couple years ago we went down to the armor museum outside of Ft Knox. We will be visiting Bovington next time we go to jolly old England. Kids’ll love it. Nothing pleases me more than that TV show (in HD!) about refurbing old tanks – the Panther episode was fantastic.